Drivers

Arkansas Moves Ahead With Road Plans

June 30, 1999
• by Staff

Get ready for orange barrels in Arkansas. Now that voters have approved a highway bond issue and new fuel and gas taxes are being phased in, Arkansas highway commissioners are making plans for road construction.

A draft map prioritizing interstate projects revealed a construction site that could stretch as far as 50 miles on Interstate 40. Other stretches could be a half or a third that long.Construction contracts will be let in early 2000. Nearly 400 miles of the state's 589-mile interstate system will be repaired during the next five years. About 84 miles are expected to be bid out next year.The projects will be paid for using revenues from the bonds, which will be repaid with a portion of future federal highway maintenance money and about $10 million a year from higher diesel fuel taxes.

KeepTruckin is fast-growing company that specializes in providing electronic logging and fleet management solutions for owner-operators and small carriers. It recently announced a new round of capital to fund its expansion. We spoke to KeepTruckin Co-founder and CEO Shoaib Makani about where they came from and where they're going.

A quarterly survey of a varied panel of trucking fleets finds continued strong plans to buy more trucks, especially among larger fleets, and among private fleets looking to address capacity and rate issues – but those truck orders are in many cases about other things than adding capacity, because drivers continue to be in short supply.